Introduction

Welcome to the West Virginia Next Generation Course materials. This site is designed to help support teachers, students, and parents in teaching and learning the content and practices set forth by the West Virginia Next Generation Content standards and objectives. This site is designed to be a dynamic and evolve in a manner to help support the highest quality of teaching and learning. This site is not meant to be a one size-fits-all curriculum for students. The course materials can provide a consistent foundation for addressing the desired course content standards and objectives. The Next Generation Courses will provide digital course content designed by West Virginia teachers, validated by Higher education faculty, and developed by West Virginia University Academic Innovation.

This site aims to provide teachers and students with a structured series of teaching and learning resources to help support students in the development of their knowledge and skills in mathematics. The resources included in this site focus on covering the educational criteria described in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). With next generation assessments like PARCC and Smarter Balanced rapidly approaching, students need critical digital literacy skills so they are comfortable taking computer-based tests, and can utilize interactive tools and skills to demonstrate mathematical knowledge and skills.

The course guide will provide interactive and engaging instructional resources for teaching integrated math courses developed based upon the common core state standards for mathematics. The engagements in this course are focused on enabling students to conduct real-world math exercises and problem solving to foster a deeper learning of the more complex mathematical concepts. Additionally, these resources can be used to support a "flipped-classroom" approach, as well as provide opportunities for students to hone their math skills outside of the classroom.

The courses are structured into a chronological series of units and lessons. With in the unit there is a broad overview of “what should be learned and why?” The lesson will consist of a video overviewing the big idea of the lesson, a visual demonstration of developing mastery of the content objectives, a printable lesson plan, interactive engagements for students and teachers to develop mastery, additional support items, sample assessment items, and a location for sharing ideas, resources, or questions. The support throughout these course guides will assist teachers in consistently implementing the CCSS. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards and Objectives marks a new era in mathematics instruction with the Standards for Mathematical Practice. If every teacher of mathematics were to adjust their instruction by incorporating the resources located on this course guide, a pathway can be created for mathematics achievement increase.

Digital Content Development

For over a decade, research studies of mathematics education in high-performing countries have pointed to the conclusion that the mathematics curriculum in the United States must become substantially more focused and coherent in order to improve mathematics achievement in this country. To deliver on the promise of common standards, the standards must address the problem of a curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” These Standards are a substantial answer to that challenge. It is important to recognize that “fewer standards” are no substitute for focused standards. Achieving “fewer standards” would be easy to do by resorting to broad, general statements. Instead, these Standards aim for clarity and specificity. Assessing the coherence of a set of standards is more difficult than assessing their focus. William Schmidt and Richard Houang (2002) have said that content standards and curricula are coherent if they are articulated over time as a sequence of topics and performances that are logical and reflect, where appropriate, the sequential or hierarchical nature of the disciplinary content from which the subject matter derives. That is, what and how students are taught should reflect not only the topics that fall within a certain academic discipline, but also the key ideas that determine how knowledge is organized and generated within that discipline. This implies that to be coherent, a set of content standards must evolve from particulars (e.g., the meaning and operations of whole numbers, including simple math facts and routine computational procedures associated with whole numbers and fractions) to deeper structures inherent in the discipline. These deeper structures then serve as a means for connecting the particulars (such as an understanding of the rational number system and its properties). These Standards endeavor to follow such a design, not only by stressing conceptual understanding of key ideas, but also by continually returning to organizing principles such as place value or the properties of operations to structure those ideas.

The sequence of topics and performances that is outlined in a body of mathematics standards must also respect what is known about how students learn. In recognition of this, the development of these Standards began with research-based learning progressions detailing what is known today about how students’ mathematical knowledge, skill, and understanding develop over time. In the early grades there is greater focus and coherence.